1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to modular jack, and particularly, to a high speed modular jack having stacked mating ports.
2. Description of Related Art
U.S. Pat. No. 6,655,988, issued to Simmons et al. on Dec. 2, 2003, discloses a stacked jack modular jack assembly having a multi-port housing. The assembly includes the housing, a plurality of jack modules, a plurality of LEDs, and a plurality of LED modules. The jack module 10 includes an outer insulating housing holding a jack subassembly. The jack subassembly comprises an upper jack portion, an intermediate shield, and a lower jack portion, a lower housing portion, two vertical component boards, and a vertical shield member disposed between the two vertical component boards.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,659,807, issued to Zheng et al. on Dec. 9, 2003, discloses another multiport modular jack. The modular jack has an insulating housing and a plurality of jack subassemblies. Each jack subassembly has a base member, a first and second horizontal printed circuit boards (PCB), a pair of insert portions mounted on corresponding PCBs, and a plurality of terminals insert molded in the insert portions. One of the insert portions has a plurality of first positioning posts and first mounting holes, the other insert portion has a plurality of second positioning posts and mounting holes second stably engaging with the first mounting holes and the first positioning posts.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,511,348, issued to Wojtacki et al. on Jan. 28, 2003, discloses another multiport modular jack. The modular jack comprises an outer housing and a plurality of modular jack subassemblies. The modular jack subassemblies are comprised of an elongate beam support having a plurality of modular jack contacts on both sides thereof. The contacts extend into printed circuit board contacts and extend to and beyond the side edges of the elongate beam support, leaving the space above and below the printed circuit board contacts and the beam support free, to accommodate signal conditioning component. Two printed circuit board modules are mounted orthogonally to the side edges of the beam support and include signal conditioning components. A vertical shield plate is interposed between two adjacent subassemblies.
Such multi-port connectors are used for networks and operated at high rates of one gigabyte and higher so that excellent conditioning of the signals to be transferred is required. Shielding is therefore normally necessary in order for example to provide a so-called Common Mode Rejection (CMR) and to guarantee a specified electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and/or resistance to electromagnetic disturbance. For the purpose of conditioning the signals it is therefore further necessary to incorporate within the arrangement corresponding components such as particularly magnet coils but also capacitive components in order to correspondingly condition the signals.
An object of the invention consequently consists of providing a new and substantially improved modular jack connector structure with respect to the prior art and particularly for use in the case of Ethernet networks so as to provide a modular jack connector with complete shielding between any two adjacent ports and required signals conditioning.